On Media

Small businessman buys big Limbaugh ad

Following two weeks of news reports about a Rush Limbaugh advertiser exodus, a small businessman in Lenor City, Tennessee, has come out with an advertisement in Limbaugh's defense.

Steven Eimers, who runs a local window cleaning service and recorded the advertisement at WOKI Knoxville yesterday, says he bought the ad not just to earn business but because he wanted to support free speech.

"I've already got a ton of positive repsonses," Eimers told me. "I'm just a small little window cleaning company, but for a small business guy the ads on Rush right now are not that expensive. To be able to stand up for what you believe in is just incredible."

In the 60-second spot, his first advertisement in over ten years, Eimers says Limbaugh made "morally wrong statements," but criticized a number of "dangerous, radical organizations" for seizing upon those statements and to attack free speech.

"They are harassing advertisers with questionably legal secondary boycotts and threats," he says. "We support free speech... For those who will choose to use this ad as an excuse to attack our constiutional right to free speech, I have one thing to say: We will not be intimidated. Bring it on."

Eimers told me that his add has already earned him at least one customer, and that over the next five to ten years that customer's service will pay ten-times what it cost him to make the ad. (He would not disclose the cost of the ad buy).

"I've alread made back the money I paid, so I'm pumped," he told me.

But Eimers said he was equally excited about the chance to stand up for what he believed in, and said he was inspired by a segment he heard on Limbaugh's show.

"I'm fond of Rush because he told a story one time about how when people run into the slightest bit of resistance, they quit," he said. "Years ago, when I was looking for a job, I was filling out an application. Rush told a story about people giving up, and he said, 'the problem with most of you is you meet the slightest resistance in life and you quit.' So I got back to work and I hustled."

UPDATE: Judd Legum of Think Progress, the progressive site that has led the charge on covering the Limbaugh ad exodus, emailed immediately after I published this story to note: